Equal parts life, love & food

Archive for category Baking

Keeping all my favorite cake decorating supplies in order is no small feat. They range from tiny piping tips to a rather big turntable that I used to get an even coat of frosting on my layer cakes. For the more frequently used supplies (spatulas, fondant tools, piping tips & bags, sprinkles etc.) I adapted the Wilton Ultimate Tool Caddy to fit my needs and make it easy to take on the go.

Luckily it is well-designed to fit a lot of the typical baker’s equipment, like this handy food coloring compartment:

But… I took it one step beyond Wilton’s vision and added some of my own touches to make it more practical. I like to know where to find things, so labeling and organizing is an addiction second nature for me. I’m also a little crafty and like to be unique so I did some personalizing while I was at it!

How I keep my Cake Decorating Supplies at Bay:

Using a Silhouette SD that I borrowed from a friend (seriously the coolest crafting tool on the face of the earth!) I cut my logo out of sticker paper and applied it to bottom compartment.

After putting everything in its place I used a label maker with black ink and clear labels (I don’t recommend the one I have to anyone… but it did the job). Now I don’t have to hunt for any of the supplies and I know where to put them back when I’m done making a mess in the kitchen (or better yet… hubby knows where to put them if he’s helping me with dishes)!

The last thing I did was get my piping tips in order…umm…like… by number. (Ok, maybe this was taking it a step too far but I looove it!) Since the tip compartment is clear, I created a template that fits underneath, showing the spot where each numbered tip lives. If I have more than one of a type it just gets stacked on top!

I keep my fun BakeCakery stickers in one compartment so I don’t forget to include them with each cake. I soOoOO want to do a cake competition just so I can show off my sweet cake box!

I had one of those nights where I felt inspired. Not by a recipe, or an ingredient but just an idea: Create meringues that look like Robin Eggs. You know, those pretty teal blue eggs with brown speckles on them? Unfortunately, by the time I thought of it, it was much too late to start a baking project and I didn’t think I had all the ingredients. But I did it anyway…

If you’ve never had meringues before, they are a fairly simple treat. Mostly sugar, egg white and a lot of air. They melt on your tongue like cotton candy and they are one of the daintiest desserts you can make.

Usually they are made in the shape of a rose, a drop or star, but I’ve also come across these realistic-looking meringue mushrooms several times. These gave me hope that you could make just about anything with meringue, but first I set out on a trek around the interwebs to find any previous attempts at a Robin Egg version. To my surprise, I learned a lot about Robin Eggs and a lot about meringues, but nada on combining the two!

So here it is folks, my late night, super fluffy original Robin Egg Meringue treats!!

Robin Egg Meringues

(makes 30-40 depending on size)

½ c. egg whites (4 large eggs)

¼ tsp. cream of tartar

¼ tsp. salt (very important, these are too sweet otherwise)

1 tsp. vanilla extract (I used coffee extract and they were divine!)

4 big drops of blue food coloring

1 c. granulated sugar

1 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tbsp. vodka (use this to make a cocoa “paint” – alcohol evaporates and dries faster than water)

Get your oven preheated to 225F. Separate out your egg whites and toss them into your stand mixer with the whisk attachment (you can do it with a hand mixer too, but its a labor of love). When the whites look foamy, sprinkle in the cream of tartar, salt, extract and any coloring you want. (I found that blue + the brown extract gave a perfect teal color!)

With the mixer on high, slowly sprinkle in the sugar, taking care not to dump it all in (this is so the sugar can dissolve in the egg properly and you don’t end up with grains in the final product).

Whip everything until super stiff, shiny peaks form. It should look like a sticky blue cloud at this point.

Robin Egg Tutorial

Put a large round tip into a piping bag (I used Ateco 802 from my favorite tip set).

Get a baking sheet set up with a Silpat or some parchment paper.

For the most realistic effect, you want to make these about the size of an actual egg. Initially I printed a little template and put it under the baking mat so I could see the shape I wanted.

Then I ignored all that and found best way to pipe them is to make the shape of a “6”.This way you get a thinner top and a more round bottom on your egg.

Using a small food-safe paintbrush (toothpick or small spoon will work too), gently flatten out the peak at the end of the 6 and use it to fill in the gap so that it looks like an egg!

These will puff very slightly when baking and even out tiny humps and bumps, but you want to get them as smooth as you can for a realistic effect.

Put them in the oven at 225 for about an hour. They are done when they feel dry and hard to the touch.

Here comes the fun part. Mix together the cocoa powder and vodka forming a thick paste. We are really making chocolate paint here!

Splatter the brown “paint” all over the eggs (you are looking for small and large dots here).

Tada!!

I kept a couple and sent the rest of these off to work with Jason. I’ve decided what I really need are more friends/occasions to bake for here in Atlanta!

One of my favorite birthday traditions growing up was that my mom would always ask us what special meal & cake we wanted and then she’d slave away in the kitchen until it was just perfect. I’ve decided to continue that tradition, so I asked J-Bird for his special request. This year it was Tres Leches!

We were celebrating a BIG birthday – my hubs turned 30! He was out of town for work on his actual b-day, so we decided to gather up some friends and have a night out at the Japanese Steakhouse (his favorite). After slathering white sauce over everything and eating about a pound of rice, everyone came back to our place to sing & eat cake!

His choice of cake actually surprised me because I’ve only made Tres Leches once for a Cinco De Mayo party. It was kind of fitting for a 30th birthday – I told everyone it was a “Tres Cero” Leches Cake (three zero in Spanish). Oh the wit.

As far as I’m concerned, any cake you need a torch to make is a winner! The frosting is particularly forgiving because you don’t have to be too exact with your piping skills. You could even make it spiky with a spoon before torching instead. After it was all toasted, I garnished the top with some strawberry “roses” and blackberries.

I was so busy baking that I forgot to buy candles, so we got creative with a taper and then had to go a little overkill with lighting it. (Jason REALLY wanted to play with the torch!)

Tres Leches is a sticky, buttery cake with most of the sweetness coming from the frosting and berries. The meringue adds that extra touch of caramely flavor that is hard to resist.

Don’t tell, but we ended up sharing leftovers for breakfast with a hot cup of coffee!

Tres Leches Cake w/ Toasty Meringue

Cake Layers

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Sift together the 3 dry ingredients. Cream butter and sugar until white and fluffy. Add in eggs, one at a time until just blended. Follow with vanilla extract and mix until incorporated. Alternate adding 1/3 of the flour and 1/2 the milk, mixing until just incorporated.

Pour batter into two 8” greased cake pans lined with parchment. Bake 55 min or until it passes the toothpick test. Cool completely in pans.

Tres Leches Sauce

2 c. evaporated milk
2 c. sweetened condensed milk
2 c. cream

Mix and chill. Pour half of mixture over each of the two cake layers and allow to soak in.

Meringue Frosting

Bring water and sugar to a boil in a small pan. Heat until it reaches 240 F on a candy thermometer (softball temp for sugar). Whip egg whites in a clean metal bowl until soft peaks form. With the mixer on medium, slowly pour the sugar syrup into the beaten egg whites. Crank up to high speed, adding lemon juice and vanilla and mixing until stiff, shiny peaks form.

Turn cakes out and frost with meringue icing between layers. Spread extra meringue on the exterior of the cake and pipe designs as desired. Using a creme brulee torch, lightly brown the outside of the frosting with a continuous sweeping motion, taking care not to burn the meringue.

A note about eggs: I used pasteurized eggs for my meringue and they did not whip up as nicely resulting in a looser texture. I suggest regular eggs, but be aware that raw eggs can pose health issues. The lemon juice and hot sugar do help “cook” the eggs, but you can decide what you prefer.

I love an excuse to try a new recipe, really I do… but when my good friend Jenny raved about a red velvet cake with made with beets, I made lots of funny faces – until I realized she was serious. Not to mention that it was her birthday, so I couldn’t possibly say no!

Jenny has been on a quest to get healthier and as her workout partner, I figured I had to oblige her request for a lighter version of this quintessential southern cake (after all she could only save up so many Weight Watchers points!)

The recipe comes from Spotted Salamander Catering in Columbia, SC who introduced Jenny to beet red velvet cupcakes at one of her recent couponing workshops. They kindly shared their recipe, so I set out to recreate it and hopefully not fail at my first encounter with beets.

I had two initial observations. (#1) Fresh beets turn everything fuschia and (#2) they smell remarkably like dirt. No worries, that must mean they are filled with antioxidants and vitamins and stuff, right? Now I know where the phrase “beet red” comes from, just be sure to wear appropriately colored clothing!

As I always do when trying a new recipe, I did some pre-baking research and found lots of details and variations of beet red velvet cake. This post in particular highlighted the effect of pH on the color of the final cake and the chemical engineering nerd in me couldn’t resist an experiment of my own. Beets are naturally red from betalains, compounds whose color is very sensitive to temperature, pH and moisture.

The original recipe from Spotted Salamander really only made enough for one 9″ round cake pan, so I made two layers exactly the same way, but added lemon juice (1/4 c.) to one to see if it resulted in a brighter red cake. (if you stare at the picture below long enough you’ll notice the top layer is darker brown and the bottom layer with lemon juice retained a more reddish tone.. too bad I didn’t have any litmus paper on hand!)

The icing on the cake (heh) is that I reserved some of the beet juice to tint the cream cheese icing on the cake. No Red #40 here! When I’m piping words I like to print out the size and spacing of the text as a guide and then freehand it. This font is Minya Nouvelle for anyone interested.

And of course you need the action shot of the birthday girl blowing out quite a few glowing candles 🙂 The cake was really delicious and thankfully didn’t taste (or smell) like beets at all!

Cream together the cream cheese and butter at room temperature. Add the salt and sugar and whip until light and fluffy. Stir in the vanilla. Frost your cooled cake and sprinkle sides with chopped pecans for garnish if desired.

As it turns out, you can have your cake and eat your beets too!

Sometimes all it takes to inspire a new recipe is a fun new ingredient to experiment with, a special occasion or a cool new tool you are just dying to try out. The cake I’m going to share with you today was really a combo of all three, as I set out to use a new fun mini bundt pan set to make a vanilla infused pound cake for two very important occasions!

Let’s start with a sneak peek inside my kitchen when I’m baking. Here is what it looked like after a recon trip to Publix to acquire all necessary ingredients:

We got an iPad last year and as you can see, it’s quickly become our most used kitchen tool! Its so handy when you need a quick recipe idea, want to do a conversion and I’ve even starting saving our weekly meal plan to it for quick perusing.

More on using the iPad in the kitchen in a later post, for now lets get back to the vanilla cream cheesy goodness.

The star ingredient in this cake is Vanilla. I used two delicious forms to get the rich robust flavor I wanted: Nielsen Massey Vanilla bean paste and Khoisan Tea Bourbon Vanilla powder. Both of these were gifts from my super awesome momma, and both were picked up in the TJ Maxx food aisle for a fraction of what you would pay elsewhere.

Also a gift, but this time from Jason’s mommy, I had been dying to try out this fun Nordicware bundt pan (ps… If you ever don’t know what to get me for Christmas… kitchen toys are always a winner!) With bundt cakes its important to spray your pans very well and I use an icecream scoop to distribute the batter evenly.

You’ll notice a few air bubbles in my final product. I’m so used to trying to keep things light & fluffy that I forgot with bundt cakes you should tap on them to settle out the air prior to baking.

The three round cakes were a surprise for our good friend James’ birthday. His wife was out of the country and after some prodding she informed me that he loved pound cake with glazey stuff on top. It was the funniest thing when his sister also dropped off a pound cake the same day!

The remaining heart shaped cake (not exactly appropriate to share for a dudes bday when his wife is in another country) stayed home and got a special Valentine’s day treatment for me and J-Bird to enjoy. I sprinkled these sweet Wilton Hearts under the cake like confetti and drizzled the glaze over the contours of the cake for a dramatic effect.

I also cooked down some frozen strawberries in confectioners sugar and water and served that with the sliced cake. Apparently we were too busy savoring it to take a photo! At any rate, here’s the recipe so you can whip this up in your own kitchen.

Preheat your oven to 325 F. Coat your bundt pan with cooking spray. Cream together the softened cream cheese and butter until smooth. Slowly add the sugar and beat until fluffy. Incorporate each egg individually and mix until uniform. Scrape sides of bowl and add in all of the flour. When flour is incorporated, add your vanilla ingredients and stir until uniformly distributed. Pour into bundt pan and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes or use the toothpick check. (Note: mine only needed 50 minutes due to the smaller pan size).

Vanilla Bean Glaze

Mix the milk and meringue powder using the whisk attachment on your mixer. Add in the vanilla bean paste. Incorporate one cup of the powdered sugar at a time, whipping between each addition. On the last cup of sugar, add slowly until you achieve the thickness of glaze you are after. Drizzle over the top of the cake with a squeeze bottle for a professional look.

tip: Meringue powder is the secret to getting a white opaque glaze. You can omit the ingredient if you don’t have it, but your glaze will look thinner and more translucent.

I have been mixing things up for dinner lately and trying to incorporate healthy satisfying dishes that are also light. Cheese is my weakness so I’ve been hunting for ways to incorporate it wisely without going too crazy.

My sweet mom gave me a beautiful red Emeril souffle crock for Christmas and I just love that having the right equipment can make a girl confident enough to attempt even the toughest of recipes. Turns out my preconceived worst-case-scenario visions of catastrophically collapsing souffles were unwarranted and this recipe is actually pretty easy!

I served this along a mixed green salad topped with Craisins and drizzled with The. Best. Salad. Dressing. Evar. Period. (see recipe for that below)

Salad Dressing Recipe

Ok, busted – this really isn’t a recipe. I pour some vinegar into a bowl and whisk while streaming in a similar amount of olive oil. Once its whipped and thick, I grind some spice blend on top and drizzle it over mixed greens. -Booyah!

For a girl who grew up hating leafy greens & salad dressing, and whose still not a fan of tartness, this vinaigrette is totally r.o.c.k.i.n. Yes you have to haveFrantoia Olive Oil and the Vincotto Hot Pepper Vinegar (which is actually very sweet and not hot in the slightest). You will never look at salad the same way again!!

Before I attempt anything crazy like croissants, I though it wise to try my hand at a few simpler breads first.

Brioche is one of those breads I’ve seen used to make fancy french toast or bread pudding on TV, but I’ve never come across it in any of my local spots. I’d heard its a sweet, eggy, dense bread with a funny round puff on top that is generally cooked in a big fluted pan.

Three things pushed me over the edge to give it a go at home:

These adorable mini-brioche pans (mama is the traditional one in the back)

The recipe made way more dough than I needed for my 6 cute tins. Not to worry, I just put the extra dough in muffin tins and they actually turned out really similar!

Be forewarned, its not a difficult recipe, but there are several very LONG waiting periods. I would suggest starting the dough the day before you want to eat it! It’s really an exercise in patience, not baking.

Combine the yeast and warm milk in the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment. Let the yeast dissolve for 5 min.

Add flour, sugar, salt and eggs to the milk mixture. Beat on low speed until smooth and scrape the bowl as needed.

Switch to the dough hook attachment and use it to knead the dough on low for 5 minutes. (It will look soft and elastic and the dough will begin pulling away from the bowl)

Add half of the butter at a time to the dough. Mix on medium after each addition until incorporated.

Knead the dough in the mixer for an additional 4 minutes until smooth and elastic again. Mine was pretty sticky at this point.

Cover and allow to rise in a warm place for 1 hour. The dough should double in size and two fingers pressed into the dough leave an indention that doesn’t spring back.

Punch the dough down, cover with plastic wrap and then refrigerate for 8 hours or until morning.

Remove the dough from the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature (90 minutes).

Divide it into 4 equal pieces.

Cut the dough portion into 6 equal pieces and roll them into a 1.5 in ball. Place into sprayed muffin tins and allow to rise another 45 minutes.

Mix water and egg white and gently brush the top of each roll with the mixture. This is what gives you the pretty golden outside!

Bake at 350 in a preheated oven for 14 minutes or until golden. Cool on wire racks. Serve with butter because it tastes amazing that way!

These are totally worth the wait. I microwaved a little butter and spread it over each one. They were fluffy, sweet, buttery, soft in the middle and chewy on the outside! The fluff in the center slipped over to one side on several of them, so I will skip that part when I make them again.

Ok, ok. I know my blog is called ” The BakeCakery” and that there hasn’t been a whole lotta caking going on lately. I will remedy that sometime soon, but I assure you that there has been plenty of baking. I want to share 2 amazing cookie recipes with you. They start with the same basic dough, both contain fruit & herbs (stick with me here…) and the end result is two incredibly unique, insanely tasty cookies. In fact, my sweet cookie-loving husband said these were “better than chocolate chip” – Now that’s love!

Basic Dough

Cream together the butter and two sugars until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined. Sift in the flour and baking powder and mix until just incorporated. Form a ball from the dough and cut it in half.

Sage, Apricot, Cornmeal Thumbprints

makes 20 cookies

Add the corn meal, dried sage and lemon zest to the dough and mix until distributed. Form cookies into 1 in balls and press flat with your thumb. Place a sage leave on top of each indention and cover with a tablespoon of apricot preserves. Bake at 350 for 11-12 minutes or until edges begin to brown.

Cranberry & Rosemary Cookies

makes 20 cookies

Add nutmeg, cranberries and chopped rosemary to the other 1/2 of the dough. Mix until distributed. Form into 1 in. balls and press lightly. Top each cookie with a rosemary sprig. Bake at 350 for 14-15 minutes or until edges begin to brown.

I’m not sure I can really describe the taste of these. They are unlike any cookies I’ve ever had, and I’ve tried a lot of cookies. The sage one has an extra crunch from the cornmeal, but the caramelized jam also gives it a chewy, sticky quality. The rosemary ones look like and have the texture of a chocolate chip cookie but they taste like winter! Here are some photos Jas took as they were coming out of the oven:

Here is the long-awaited reworked version of Martha’s Peanut, Caramel and Chocolate Tart. As I was doing the calorie math on my version – I realized I left off the calories and fat of 1.5 cups of heavy cream in the original. While my changes didn’t magically turn this into health food, you can now eat two pieces for the price of one. Here’s the side by side comparison:

Martha’s Tart

My Version

Calories

1064

633

Fat

81g

34g

Sat. Fat

39g

18g

Unnecessary butter was eliminated in the crust in favor of an egg white to hold it all together. Heavy cream in the filling was replaced with an instant pudding and whipped topping mousse. The caramel is now easier and much safer (always a plus) and has a richer buttery flavor. Finally, I left some of the cream out of the ganache which didn’t affect the flavor, but made a big dent in the calories. If you wanted to get really excited, you could use sugar free jello and cool whip and reduced fat peanut butter.

Snicker’s Tart (Amy’s Version)

Crust

Preheat the oven to 350º. Pulse graham crackers, granulated sugar, egg white and melted butter in the food processor until crumbs form. Press mixture into bottom and up sides of a 9-in. spring form pan. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until set.

Caramel Sauce

Stir together the sugar, cream and honey and slowly bring to a boil. Cook over medium high, stirring occasionally until golden brown and bubbly (temp reaches 230F measured by a candy thermometer). Remove from the heat and stir in the butter, vanilla and peanuts. Let cool for 10 minutes. Carefully pour onto the baked crust and let cool. (Easy, delicious and safe!)

Peanut Butter Mousse

Beat milk and pudding mix until dissolved. Add in peanut butter and whip until blended. Add the whipped topping and beat until incorporated. Gently spread peanut butter mouse over caramel in an even layer and refrigerate 30 minutes.

Ganache

1 c. semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 c. heavy cream

Place chocolate and cream in a medium microwave safe bowl. Microwave on half power for 1 minute increments, stirring between, until the chocolate is melted and cream incorporated. Remove tart from refrigerator, and pour in ganache to cover surface. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or freeze and then thaw slightly before serving.

The October 2010 issue of Martha Stewart Living features several recipes for adult desserts that mimic childhood favorites so you don’t go dipping into your kids candy bowl. There is a Malted Milk Creme Brulee, a 100 Grand inspired cake, and the Peanut, Caramel and Chocolate Tart made to taste like a Snickers that I decided to make.

Normally I read cookbooks and recipes like a story – in full before deciding whether I’ll make them. But Martha couldn’t lead me wrong, right? I’m a sucker for Snickers and the picture, complete with oozy caramel, won me over. It doesn’t help that a lot of magazines have started showing the eye candy early and then making you flip to the very end of the magazine to actually see the recipes. (Does that annoy anyone else?)

I heard a new-to-me saying the other day on a cooking show that made me laugh out loud:

“What doesn’t kill you, makes you fatter.”

That is certainly fitting for this recipe! This sucker has, count them, *3* cups of heavy cream. Not to mention creme fraiche, a whole stick of butter, cream cheese, and a honkin’ gob of peanut butter. I think Paula Deen just fainted! In all seriousness, a king-size Snicker’s bar has 537 calories and 27 grams of fat. Martha suggests this baby serves 10. I actually calculated it all in a handy Excel spreadsheet and at a whopping 943 calories/slice (68 g of fat, 31 sat. fat) you’d be better off eating 13 fun size snickers bars!!!!

I tried, really hard, not to modify the recipe the first time around so I would know what it SHOULD taste like. Martha’s recipe, even after refrigeration was loose and almost savory because of all the salt and peanut butter.To get it to look like the picture, I had to freeze it! It actually tasted a thousand times better after that because it made the peanut butter flavor more subtle. At almost 1000 calories a slice, I felt betrayed having to doctor (no pun intended) this thing up.

One of my other favorite magazines is Cooking Light and they take our favorite fattening recipes and figure out substitutions to make them more nutritious. Stay tuned for my next blog post where I will makeover this ungodly recipe into something delicious that you and I can actually eat. For now, check out Martha’s recipe complete with my sarcasm commentary in blue, but read quickly so you don’t absorb the calories!

For the Chocolate Ganache

1. Preheat the oven to 350º. Make the chocolate crust: Combine cookie crumbs, granulated sugar and 1/4 tsp. salt in a bowl (why not include the measurement in the recipe? weird). Stir in butter. Press mixture into bottom and 2 1/2 in. up sides of a 9 in spring form pan. Bake until dry and firm, 8-10 min. Let cool.

2. Make the caramel sauce: Heat granulated sugar and water in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, washing down sides of pan with a wet pastry brush to prevent sugar crystals from forming., until medium amber, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, and carefully add heavy cream (mixture will bubble and steam). Return to heat and bring to a boil, making sure caramel that seized up when cream was added melts. (sounds violent.. and it is!) Transfer to a bowl, and stir in creme fraiche. Refrigerate until cool but still pourable, about 45 minutes. Fold in peanuts. (This is the most dangerous recipe for caramel I’ve ever made. It pops and splatters molten caramel lava all over the place.)

3. Meanwhile, make the peanut butter mousse: Beat cream cheese and confectioner’s sugar with a mixer on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy. Beat in 1/2 tsp. salt. Add peanut butter and vanilla, and beat until combined. Whisk heavy cream in a separate bowl until medium-stiff peaks form. Fold 1/3 of the whipped cream into peanut butter mixture. Fold in remaining whipped cream in 2 additions. (REALLY? Why do we need this many steps!)

4. Assemble the tart: Pour caramel sauce into cooled chocolate crust. Gently spread peanut butter mouse over caramel in an even layer, making sure they don’t blend together. Refrigerate 30 minutes. (or 24 hours if you want it to turn out right)

5. Make the chocolate ganache: Place chocolate in a small heat-proof bowl. Bring cream to a simmer in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Pour cream over chocolate and let stand for 1 minute. Whisk to combine. (Use immediately) (as opposed to letting it re-harden?)

6. Remove tart from refrigerator, and pour in ganache to cover surface. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. (and by that I mean a lifetime)

Make ahead: Caramel sauce can be refrigerated for up to 3 days. Reheat in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water before folding in peanuts.

Storage assembled tart can be refrigerated overnight. (In fact, you have to do this or you’ll just end up with a pile of goo. Better yet, put that baby in the deep freezer.)

Hi my name is Amy and welcome to my blog, The Bake Cakery. This is a diary of sorts about things that make me happy, inspire me or make me laugh. Check out the about page for more info and info below to see what I'm up to.